Decisions, decisions

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Two more huge court decisions in favor of Indigenous peoples this month met with instant appeals. Here we go again.

The Haida people caught the world's attention when they did the unthinkable and asked a British Columbia court to enforce Canadian law. The court obliged.

Gordon Benoit told us things were pretty lonely back in the early 1980s when he started his quest to force Canada to follow through on the terms of its contractual obligation to his Treaty 8 people. Even his own leadership in those days told him, "Don't rock the boat."

Wow. Maybe we should have put quotes around the word "leadership" in that last sentence. But, thankfully, Mr. Benoit provided his own brand of leadership and it paid off when Justice Douglas Campbell ruled-in remarkably quick fashion as court rulings go-that the Crown had made a promise and Benoit had every right to ask the Crown to keep it.

So what message is Canada sending when it appeals these two cases? Well, we've been here before, haven't we? The big question is this: Why do the Canadian people stand for it when their government refuses to obey its own laws or even live up to commonly accepted Canadian moral standards?

Canada, British Columbia and the Weyerhaeuser company had had a duty to consult the Haida before infringing on their Aboriginal title rights by logging ancestral lands. Who says so? Only the Supreme Court of Canada. So what were they doing in court on that one?

And a deal's a deal. Treaty 8 saw the settlers gain control of a huge chunk of Indian land. In return, the Crown promised the Native people living on that land that they and their descendants would be free from taxation, free to hunt and fish as if the treaty had never happened and free from enforced military service. As Benoit pointed out, it was a classic contract with both sides gaining and both sides making legally enforceable commitments. It could be argued that the Crown never began to perform its part in the contract and, as any business law student knows, the contract never took effect.

If it wasn't for the political considerations involved here, you wouldn't need to go to the Federal Court of Canada to get a ruling that Treaty 8 lands still belong to the Indigenous peoples. A justice of the peace could handle that one. It's that open and shut.

So why are the press and the public so up in arms about these decisions? They reflect basic Canadian legal and moral values. And why is the government appealing both decisions?

Somebody, please tell us it's not what we think.